Atmospheric processes regulate the formation of deep water in the subpolar North Atlantic Ocean and hence influence the large-scale ocean circulation1. Every year thousands of mesoscale storms, termed polar lows, cross this climatically sensitive region of the ocean. These storms are often either too small or too short-lived to be captured in meteorological reanalyses or numerical models2–4. Here we present simulations with a global, eddy-permitting ocean/sea-ice circulation model, run with and… CONTINUE READING